Determination of Tissue Impedances of the Inner Ear: Models and Measurements

Investigators have studied the passive electrical properties of the inner ear to provide information about transduction processes (Asakuma, Snow, and Murakami, 1978; Davis, 1965; Geisler et al., 1977; Johnstone, Johnstone, and Pugsley, 1966). Others have observed the inner ear in order to learn how better to apply improved cochlear implants (Ifukube and White, 1987; Spelman, Clopton, and Pfingst, 1982; Spelman, Clopton, and Suesserman, 1987). The techniques employed by these investigators have a common basis in their use of lumped-element circuit models for the interpretation of data. Such models can be one-dimensional (Geisler et al., 1977), two-dimensional (Johnstone, Johnstone, and Pugsley, 1966; Suesserman, 1988), or three-dimensional (Honrubia, Strelioff, and Sitko, 1976). More recently, the distributed character of the volume conductors in the cochlea has been considered when tissue properties have been measured (Ifukube and White, 1987; Spelman, Clopton, and Suesserman, 1987).

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